Dungeons & Dragons may soon have another film adaptation. There have of course been attempts at this in the past; does anyone remember this particular fantasy epic?

No, very few of you do, and for good reason. It was a pretty poor film, taking typical fantasy troupes and throwing them into the ring with the veneer of Dungeons & Dragons over the top of it.

It made for a poor example of what Dungeons & Dragons could be. So, how do you solve the D&D movie problem?

A Traditional Approach

One of the things you could do is instead of creating a D&D movie which is a generic fantasy story, you could look towards the different worlds that have been created by some of the big authors. The one that comes to mind first is that of Dragonlance by Laura and Tracy Hickman.

This series spans a trilogy of books as well as a selection of different short stories and its own campaigns setting for D&D itself. It birthed a range of great characters, fascinating villains and more. For that reason alone you could see this becoming the D&D story to bring to life.

One of the key aspects of it is that it took the format of an adventuring group, much like The Fellowship in Lord Of The Rings, and could have you rooting for different characters off the bat as well as focusing in around a single protagonist in Tanis.

Another of the big aspects of D&D history is the Forgotten Realms. Based in the realm of Faerun The Icewind Dale trilogy by R. A. Salvatore followed the exploits of Wulfgar The Barbarian and this was then followed by Drizzt Do'Urden in The Dark Elf Trilogy.

Again, much like with Dragonlance, these books were a massive success and immediately have offered up a range of likeable and diverse characters, each enough to drive home a movie. As long as the adaptations were faithful to the source material you could see them finding a home with avid fans of Dungeons & Dragons. Considering the appetite for good fantasy fare as well currently within the industry these have the wheels to become more than single movies, maybe expanding out into trilogies if required.

Taking something like this not only offers up a ready-made set of stories for them to explore but it also means that the expanded offerings for D&D are up for grabs for those wanting to know more. If you wanted to explore the places they visited in the movie, they are ready to go in the form of the literature and adventure modules.

Entering The Real World

Another approach to take when creating a D&D movie would be to take the same route that movies like The Gamers and have done. Keep the characters grounded within the real world and have the game be a way for them to explore their friendships, building them, breaking them and more besides. You could even still work in some of the fantasy elements as well where you show the characters off on their adventures at times, working through things that the players in the real world are also having to deal with.

We've seen Stranger Things doing great things with this where the game they play is explored but it then combines with their life in the real world too, informing the way they deal with the creatures from the Upside Down and some of the other Sci-Fi elements.

You could also potentially throw them into events akin to that of the original D&D cartoon. Maybe, just maybe, you could have them do a Jumanji: Welcome To The Jungle/Narnia and have them drawn into the Fantasy world as teenagers or young adults, having to become the heroes they've played on the tabletop.

True Strike

However they approach this they really have to focus in on the elements of D&D that make it great. You either take an established story driven by this amazing game, subtitled it as 'A Dungeons & Dragons Movie' for example OR you make the game the central focus of it all. You would have the dice rolls, interactions and more being something that viewers will learn about as the movie progresses, seeing just what D&D can do when it comes to informing our encounters.

So, that's just my thoughts on things so far. Either take one of the existing universes or try and draw on the social aspect of Dungeons & Dragons from around the tabletop. Personally, I'm looking forward to...

Dragonlance: A Dungeons & Dragons Film

"The one that comes to mind first is that of Dragonlance by Laura and Tracy Hickman..."

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I think I’d prefer the first approach (use the Drizzt books or similar established series), followed by the ‘players sucked into the game’ approach. The ‘The Gamers’ approach doesn’t sound that engaging to me and feels less like a D&D film than it does a film that has a D&D game in it. It can be well done (a similar approach was done by Geek & Sundry with MMORPGs), but the focus is the interpersonal drama rather than the fantasy world being played in.

D&D is just a set of rules so surely approaching a “D&D film” depends more on the setting. I’d rather see a film based around a decent story than a set of rules, which is probably why most attempts have failed – they focus too much on being D&D and not enough on actually being a good story

Dungeons & Dragons was a not a good, but the two sequels (Wrath of the Dragon God and Book of Vile Darkness) were worse.

There was a Dragonlance animated movie, but that sucked too. I’d love to see the Dragonlance Chronicles movie made… probably as a trilogy… and although in the art of Dragonlance, Goldmoon and Riverwind were not native american, I think that their style of dress and culture would be a good fit.

And if they could add the Dragonlance Legends trilogy that would be good too.

The three Dorkness movies are worth watching, Darkness Rising in particular (loved how the guy playing a female character kept forgetting he was a woman… made the ‘actual play’ sequences funnier).

Another low budget fantasy series was Mythica and that was not bad.

I suspect that adding the words “Dungeons and Dragons” to a movie has a negative impact on the success of the film, people think it’s for geeks.

Warcraft might have suffered a little from the same stigma, but sadly online games are still considered less geeky than tabletop games but the masses…

Which is odd when you think that tabletop games have social interaction that does not involve verbal abuse from the unseen other player across the internet… making table top gamers more sociable.

I’m just glad they dropped MMORPG to MMO as there is not really any RPG in them.

Anyway… drifted a bit of off topic…

One other world that I think would be interesting to see in film is Dark Sun… that’s a good setting and one I’d like to see.

And although there are countless vampire movies out there… Ravenloft would be a good choice… for a movie… a film is only as good as the villain and Strand is a great villain… one that you can empathise with.

Yeah @sundancer ( if you’re talking about the one with ” Uni ” the Unicorn in it ? There wasn’t another was there ? ).It was sadly left without a conclusion,the kids never made it home,they were left ” mid adventure ” in the D&D world ( iirc of course ).I’ve got it on DVD,so should really re-watch it to check my statement….Which i’ll probably do as i’m that uptight / anal about giving out correct information.

To be fair Welker does voice about 90% of animals in animation and film; he’s so prolific in one regard that apparently one time the sound editors on some film were convinced he’d provided the vocals for an animal and were shocked to find that it was a recording of an actual animal.

I have always liked idea of DnD movie based on some well known story line and having characters from those. After all DnD novels are full of stories and characters that could be used in possible movie even if those are heavy on FR with some for DL as well. Of course they did try that with Dragonlance one and they failed in execution. After all it was mix of traditional animation and some of worst CGI. IMO so far only decent DnD movie was 2nd one Wrath of the Dragon God that had lot of things from the game while also making sure that even those unfamiliar with game knew what those were thus giving fan service to fans of the game while not leaving everyone else hanging.

Considering the love that Vin Diesel has for D&D and the Drizzt series, enough to earn him the chance to write the intro do the 3rd ed. PHB, there was already a pretty good retelling of the tale in space. Yes, starting with Pitch Black and going on with the Riddick series of films you have your very own space faring drow (would that be a Dark Eldar?).

Taking a good story and crafting a believable narrative within a known game world would be fine if there was enough technical work to make the visuals fit. If you imagine the films ‘Hero’, ‘Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon’ or ‘Curse of the Golden Flower’ as being put into Kara-Tur from Forgotten Realms with a few spots of low signature magic effects then it works. Take ‘The Brothers Grimm’ and take out the portions regarding life outside Marvaden before dropping some of the color saturation to the film and you might start seeing Ravenloft (maybe more like ‘Solomon Kane’?). What seems to be another element to the gross failure of films are the lack of production budget and the cheese creatures/magic CGI. Real lighting for props of high quality will help to lower the cost of CG post production.

However it goes, an original story would be best so long as a well developed and clear “production bible” is established beforehand, if one of the Off The Shelf D&D settings was to be used maybe play around with audience expectations, Fantasy archetypes/tropes, use something along the lines of Eberron, Dark Sun or for the truly daring, Spelljammer. So rather than making a D&D movie get a well-written story that just happens to be set in one of the D&D worlds.